


Smile Again

by kookykoi



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dean Winchester/Female Reader, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 07:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16697962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kookykoi/pseuds/kookykoi
Summary: you and Dean Winchester are working together on a case but Dean is working himself too hard, meaning you have to step in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing a fic featuring the reader and this hasn’t been beta’d so I apologise in advance for any and all errors.
> 
> Also don’t ask when in the show this is set because I have no idea!
> 
> Trigger warnings: alcohol, drinking, swearing, blood, injury.

Dean drained another glass of cheap scotch that made the back of his throat burn. He set the now empty tumbler back on the desk before him beside his open laptop. On the screen was the latest news on the kidnapping of a young girl. She hadn’t been seen in four days. If Dean didn’t find her by the seventh day, she was going to be dragged down into hell because her parents sold her soul for their own selfish gains.

He reached out for the bottle with the plan to refill his tumbler but you grabbed it first.

“Nuh-uh,” you told him as he grumbled about needing the sauce to help him think. “You need sleep, sunshine, not more booze.”

“Bullshit,” he shot back at you. His eyes were narrowed at you as if his glare alone was enough to make you change your mind.

“Go to bed,” you said, holding the half-empty scotch bottle in one hand and pointing at the lumpy motel bed with the other.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Dean complained. He then had to stifle a yawn and you had to suppress the urge to let out a loud ‘a ha!’ of 'I told you so’ at him.

“I can and I will.” You snapped the laptop shut.

“What the fuck? I’m working on that!” Dean snarled. His glare had been upgraded to a scowl.

“And now you’re not,” you said, standing firm. You had been travelling with the Winchester boys for a couple of months now, and while Sam wasn’t there with you, off on his own hunting case, right then to help you corral Dean, it wasn’t like you needed him. You had gotten the measure of the older Winchester brother and saw through the facade he kept up almost permanently; yeah, he often acted like he was the one in charge but sometimes someone had to be in charge for him if he was ever going to live long enough for retirement.

Dean rose up out of his seat and closed the distance between you. He towered over you, trying to let his height intimidate you. That hadn’t worked in the past and it wasn’t going to work now. You stared right back up into his harsh green eyes, not blinking or wavering. “I only let you come on this case with me out of pity,” Dean hissed.

You felt his breath rush over your skin as he spoke, warm and soaked in booze. You rolled your eyes. “You’re drunk, you’re overworked, and you’re overtired.” Still, his words had stung your pride. With your free hand, you tried to goad him towards the bed. He remained statue still.

“A girl’s life is-” He started but you finish his thought for him.

“A girl’s life is at stake and you’re the only one who can save her because you’re the only hunter in the whole entire world who can save anyone but himself. Dean, I get it, but you’re not gonna be able to do anything to help her unless you get some rest. Sleep for a couple of hours, we’ll get some food and then we’ll kick some ass. Hell, I’ll even buy you pie when this is all over.”

That was a cheap trick, bringing up pie. Using Dean’s favourite food to entice him towards reason always felt cheap to you. You wanted him to do things because he actually wanted to, not because the reward of pie was on offer. Even so, a glint flickered in his eyes.

“At least let me have the rest of the scotch,” Dean mumbled. He snatched the bottle from your grip and staggered over to the bed. He laid down on his back on top of the sheets still fully clothed. He took the top off of the bottle and took a deep swig from it. He grimaced as he swallowed.

With a sigh, you kicked off your boots and left them on the floor by the bottom of the bed. You got rid of your plaid shirt, leaving a simple tank on, and then you discarded your jeans, leaving your plain black panties on. You climbed onto the bed next to Dean, the bumpy mattress bowing under the weight of both of you.

You had asked for two beds when you booked into this motel but this was the only available room and this was the only available bed. Not that Dean seemed to mind too much about it but you were wary of this arrangement. Certain feelings had started to stir within you whenever Dean got a little too close or whenever he laughed or whenever he sent a wink your way. The standard hunter of the supernatural generally did not have time for romance and nearly every single hunter couple had to face the tragedy of losing their loved one to the forces of evil. Already, you couldn’t bring yourself to think what you would do if anything happened to Dean. Your feelings were getting too unwieldy to be considered platonic any more.

You reached out and took the bottle from Dean. He gave it up without a fight.

“Just a couple-a hours, then it’s back to work,” he said, his brow etched in a frown.

You watched his face for a moment before taking a swig from the bottle for yourself. God, this stuff tasted like dirty dishwater. You shuddered as the liquid went down. You put the bottle on the bedside table and focused your attention back to Dean’s worrisome expression.

“I just want to see you smile again,” you said, your voice lowered to a whisper.

“Huh?” Dean all but grunted as you propped your head up with your hand, your elbow rested on one of the pillows.

“You haven’t smiled in a while,” you said, poking his cheek with your forefinger. “I miss it.”

“Gimme something to smile about and I will. Simple.” Dean batted your hand away from his face.

“If it were that simple, would we be having this conversion?”

Dean wriggled down the bed so that his head was on his pillow and he closed his eyes. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation, remember? I’m supposed to be sleepin’ and that was your idea.”

You snorted in reply and the corner of Dean’s mouth dared to pinch upwards in an almost-smirk. He opened one eye to look at you before closing it again.

“Don’t watch me sleep, it’s creepy.”

You snorted again and shifted yourself so you could lay down on your back. You stared at the ceiling, running your eyes along the cracks in the plaster that zigzagged here and there. You listened to Dean’s breathing, which was shallow at first but deepened as he finally resigned himself to getting some shut-eye. His breaths turned into soft snores and the sound of them was on the right side of comforting for you to close your eyes and fall asleep too.

The last thought you have is of Dean’s smile. Not the fake one he gives to the authorities whenever he’s sneaking his way into where he wasn’t supposed to be, but the real one that he saved for special occasions. The one that made his eyes crinkle until they were nearly shut. The one that made his mouth stretch as far as it could go. The one that made your heart want to sing some cheesy love ballad from a 80’s rom-com directed by John Hughes.

Yeah, your feelings for him had gone way past platonic now.


	2. Chapter 2

“I said: hold still,” Dean growled at you. You winced and bit down on your bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, not that you were in the mood to lose any more of the red stuff.

“I am,” you snapped back. You took a large draw from the bottle of rum you found in your stash bag. You purposefully avoided looking at what Dean was doing to the large gash on your arm. The wound needed stitches and no matter how times you had been stitched up in the past, you still couldn’t bear to witness the stitches going in.

“You’re not,” Dean grumbled. He was bent over your outstretched arm, concentrating on the task at hand. He had managed to get away with only a couple of minor scratches and a handful of bruises. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you, for the hundredth time, to hold still.”

You took another draw from the rum bottle and wiped your mouth with the back of your good hand once you had placed the bottle down again. You blew out a breath from your mouth to keep the sensation of nausea from overwhelming you.

“Can you at least talk to me while you’re doing that?” You requested.

Your request was greeted with a short snort. “About what? About how you got your ass handed to you by a demon when it was your idea to go in half-cocked?”

“I wasn’t half- I had a plan.”

Another snort came out of Dean and out of the corner of your vision, you caught him shaking his head.

“The girl is safe now,” you argued. “Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Sure,” Dean said. “But getting yourself killed in the process kinda defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

You opened your mouth to argue some more but instead, because you knew Dean had a point, you drank some more of your rum and ignored Dean’s self-satisfied chuckle of victory.

“OK,” you spoke up again after a moment of silence, “you seem to be in better spirits.”

Dean had finished stitching your wound and was now wrapping your arm in a sterile bandage. “Don’t let this fool ya,” he said. “I’m still a horribly miserable son of a gun.”

“Why?” You asked as you dared to glance at your arm now the new stitches were covered up. While you couldn’t see the stitches, your arm felt better than it had done before. But that might have been the rum talking. Best slow down with the hard stuff, at least until you got some food in your system.

“You heard that thing before it got exorcised,” he said. He fastened the bandage securely but his hands lingered on your arm, his thumbs rubbing over where the demon had managed to cut into your flesh, a deep frown forming on his brow. “This ain’t over.”

“Is it ever?” You retorted. The glare that Dean gave you for your retort made you want to shrink away from him.

“This isn’t a joke,” he stated. He let go of your arm and took away the bloodied tissues and gauze he had used to clean your arm. He went to the bathroom, reaching it in a couple of sturdy strides.

“Does it look like I’m laughing?” You called after him, your glare concentrated on his back. No matter how you tried, you couldn’t find a way to get through to Dean. His walls appeared to be up higher than ever, shielding him from you and apparently his sense of humour too. You could create a nearly endless list of the times Dean thought it appropriate to crack jokes, but that version of him was seemingly absent for the duration of this case.

Screw it and screw him, you thought, picking up the rum bottle again. One more good mouthful and then you’ll think about eating something and stop trying to figure out what was going on in Dean’s head because it was a waste of your time and energy.

You could hear Dean washing his hands in the bathroom as you sloshed back more alcohol. You shuddered as you swallowed the liquid down.

“No more of that,” Dean said when he re-entered the main motel room.

“You drink all the time,” you mumbled as he took the bottle away from you. You noted that Dean took a large draw from the bottle himself. “Why can’t I drink too?”

“Because you lost a lot of blood, that’s why.” He put the bottle on the table where you kept your laptops and case research, which, from your current seat on the bed, was far out of your reach.

“You spoil all my fun,” you said which prompted a dry laugh to cough out of Dean.

“I didn’t ask you to come hunting with me. This is it. This is the life. This-”

“None of this is fun unless I say so. Blah blah blah,” you mimicked his gruff tone before erupting into a case of slightly drunken giggles. Dean stood in front of you, his arms crossed on his chest while he waited for you to recover. When you did, you cleared your throat to say: “Change the record, Winchester. I’ve heard this tune before.”

The two of you entered a staring contest at that point, or that’s how it felt for you. His steely gaze against your slightly bleary one. The rum was working its way through your system, turning everything from sober to buzzed as it went. And yet you managed to hold onto his glare with only a minimum amount of swaying.

And that was when you caught it. The tiniest hint of a genuine smile trying to break free from Dean’s grim expression. It started in the eyes, a spark of amusement daring to show through. That was followed by the corners of his lips daring to curl upwards but only in minute increments. Dean’s stubbornness prevented the smile from blooming into fruition though.

“Ha!” You declared loudly. “You wanted to laugh. I win!”

“Win what?” He asked. He sat on the bed next to you and frowned.

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “But I win it.” You let yourself fall backwards on the bed and your head hit the pillow. Your stomach grumbled about the absence of food inside of it. “I’m hungry.”

“I’ll get ya something from the diner down the road,” Dean offered. He got up from the bed and you rolled to fill the space he had emptied, your limbs spreading out as far as you could. The beginnings of sleep began to tug at your consciousness and you didn’t have enough energy left inside of you to fight it. Even Dean spoke again, it wasn’t enough to stop the encroachment of your next nap.

“Want anything in particular?” Dean turned back to look at you and found you asleep already. “Y/N?” He asked, nudging your shoulder with his hand. When he received no response, he rolled his eyes. He grabbed his jacket and pat his pockets, making sure he had his keys, wallet and phone with him. He went to the door but hesitated a moment before leaving to fulfil his promise of getting some food. He cast his eyes back to you as you dozed. You couldn’t see it but a smile, a genuine one, finally broke out across Dean’s features. The smile lasted as long as an eye blink and when you happened to open your eyes and lift your head from the pillow, you only caught sight of Dean leaving the room and closing the door behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

The case was over. The demon was vanquished, the girl was safe. Time to get back on the road again in search for more evil to fight. All of your belongings were packed back into your bags which were now packed in the trunk of Dean’s car. You were supposed to be out of town by now but Dean had insisted on making a stop: to check on the girl one last time.

You watched as Dean talked to the girl. She was small for her age so Dean was crouched down to be at her level. She had been shaken by the experience but whatever Dean was saying to her was smoothing out the edges. The girl smiled at him, a huge beaming smile, before wrapping her arms around his neck in a hug. Dean hugged her back. The hug broke and Dean returned the girl’s smile, one of his genuine smiles that he saved only for special occasions and for special people. 

The girl had been through a traumatic experience and needed every beam of light she could get but you still couldn’t shake the sense of jealousy that twisted in the pit of your stomach when Dean smiled at her. You forced yourself to look away, not wanting your negativity to reach the girl and tarnish this memory she was making.

“How’s she doing?” You asked when Dean walked over to meet you by his precious Chevy Impala.

“Better than she should be. She’s a tough one, that’s for sure,” Dean told you, hints of the smile he had shared with the girl still evident on his features. However after about a moment of his gaze being focused on you, his features took on a frown instead. “What’s wrong?”

You didn’t want to give the honest answer because it was, frankly, ridiculous. So you shrugged a shoulder and shook your head. “Nothing,” you lied, “just dealing with the whole-” you waved your hands in the air to punctuate your point -”weirdness of it all.”

You didn’t like the way Dean’s eyes narrowed at you the same way they did whenever he was examining case evidence. 

“Uh-huh,” he muttered, making it clear he was unconvinced by your explanation. 

“Don’t I owe you pie?” You said before he had an opportunity to ask any more questions. Again, you knew it was a dirty trick to use pie against Dean but it was effective.

Dean’s eyes lit up and he nodded. He got his keys out of his jeans’ pocket and swung the key ring around his forefinger. “I know just the place! Get in.”

About forty-five minutes later and a lot of skirting around what you didn’t want to talk about, you and Dean were sat in a diner just off the highway. There was a cup of steaming hot coffee in front of you and a plate of blueberry pie and a scoop of ice cream in front of Dean. He sunk his fork into the tip of the pie, his eyes practically burning with hunger and want.

“Jesus,” you whispered under your breath.

Dean brought the forkful of pie to his lips and in a blink of an eye, the piece had disappeared and he was chewing. His eyes closed and he let out an appreciative hum. You watched the whole scene with wide eyes while trying to resist the urge to laugh out loud.

“Don’t. Say. A. Word.” Dean swallowed his mouthful and with his eyes now open, fixing you with a glare. He pointed the tines of the fork at you. “This is my pie time.”

“I can see that,” you retorted. You hid behind your cup of coffee, holding it with both hands in front of your face.

Dean rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to his pie. You figured you should give the two of them some privacy by looking anywhere but at them but the scene was too amusing to miss.

“You gonna stare at me the whole time?” He asked, his left cheek bulging with the latest pie piece to be chewed.

“This is entertaining,” you said as a laugh bubbled out of your throat. “Best thing I’ve seen in weeks!”

Dean came close to laughing himself if it wasn’t for the pie piece that would cause him to choke if he did. “You need to get out more.”

“Nah, I think I’ll stay here, thanks. I like the company.”

The words were out there now and you considered if you had said too much. In fact you were certain of it from the way Dean broke his meaning eye contact with the pie to look up at your face. You chewed on your bottom lip as your cheeks decided to blush in response to his sharp green eyes being trained on you again.

“You do? Why?” 

A huge list of reasons ran through your mind at a dizzying speed which meant you are unable to pick out enough of any of them to form a coherent answer. You sipped your coffee and gave a shrug of your shoulders and hoped that whatever came out of your mouth next wasn’t going to make you want to slap your open palm to your forehead.

“You’re growing on me,” you said, content that it wasn’t too much or gave away the extent your feelings for Dean had developed. “You’re grumpy as hell most days but maybe I don’t mind that so much.”

Dean continued to study your face. You wanted to wriggle and squirm but you managed to sit still. You satisfied the urge to move by sipping your coffee again. 

“Have I got something on my face?” You asked.

Dean shook his head before depositing another piece of pie into his mouth. Some pie crumb got stuck to the corner of his mouth. You put your coffee cup down and before you could stop yourself, you reached out and wiped the crumb away. As your fingertips brushed over his skin, your touch lingered longer than necessary. You could feel Dean’s course stumble. You could feel his warmth. You could feel… too much.

You brought your hand back. “Sorry,” you quickly muttered.

“What for?” 

You dared to glance up at Dean’s face and you were treated to one of his rare genuine smiles. Your heart flipped as you noticed the way his eyes crinkled, his lips stretched and his teeth bared in the happiest way possible.

“I gotta admit: I kinda like having you around too,” he said. He put down his fork and his hand now reached out for yours. Your fingers linked with his easily like pieces of a puzzle slotting together. “And I’m not always grumpy. Give me something to smile about and I will.”

“You’re smiling now.” A smile of your own dared to grace your features.

“You gave me something to smile about.” His thumb of the hand that was holding yours rubbed over your thumb.

“Oh yeah?” You were, despite your earlier reservations, feeling bolder. “What if I gave you other things to smile about?”

“Like what, for example?” Dean leaned in over the table. The table itself wasn’t particularly wide so he didn’t have to lean in far to get closer to you.

Your boldness hit its peak and you leaned in too. You captured Dean’s lips in a soft kiss that flooded your body with a heady warmth. 

“Yeah, things like that will definitely make me smile.” Dean was now grinning at you after the kiss broke and you both sat back in your seats. He kept hold your hand and a part of you hoped he would never let go. 

You grinned back at him. “Finish your pie, Dean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who has taken the time to read this and leave kudos. Thank you also for your patience for this last chapter. I hope you enjoyed this fic. Feel free to leave comments with feedback or even requests for more! x


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